


Out of Order

by satalderihannsu



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Comedy, Farce, Galaxy Garrison, Gen, Hunk narrates, M/M, Matt knows all, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Romantic Comedy, Shiro is oblivious, Showers, birthday gift for velvedere, demolitions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-14 21:38:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9204407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/satalderihannsu/pseuds/satalderihannsu
Summary: Shiro, instructor at Galaxy Garrison, thinks there's something up with that cadet Keith. He seems nervous, all the time.  He asks his best friend for advice. Matt is full of helpful advice. That may or may not lead to the complete destruction of the Galaxy Garrison shower system.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Velvedere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velvedere/gifts).



> Happy birthday to Velvedere! A dear friend, and one who deserves better than this shite.
> 
> You can find me on [tumblr](http://satalderihannsu.tumblr.com/).

Matt Holt laughed loudly, almost dropping the converter he had been soldering. A bead of solder splashed onto his glove.

“What?”

Matt looked back at Shiro, all innocence and bright eyes. “You have to be kidding.”

“What? No, I’m not kidding.”

Matt cocked his head to the side. “No, you’re not kidding.  You’re probably incapable. It’s not earnest enough.”

Shiro put his hands to his hips. “Come on, I asked a serious question. You don’t have to treat me like that.”

Matt wriggled out of the tight space and back down onto the catwalk. “Right, right... your serious question is?”

Shiro crossed his arms.  “Look, I just told you. The new cadet? The one who beat me in the all-around race?”

“Can we talk about how a cadet beat your time?”

“No, that’s not what this question is.”

“Of course it isn't.”

“I'm happy for him.” Shiro’s face betrayed an emotion that didn't seem to be delight, exactly.

Matt shrugged as he packed his tools.

“But he… he just keeps… now this sounds silly… He keeps  _ dropping  _ things.”

Matt continued to pack spanners and wrenches and hex keys and tweezers. “That’s not a question, Shiro.”

“The question is implied. I’m starting to think that he’s nervous around me. That I make him nervous or something.”  He rubbed the back of his head as he thought. “And I can’t figure out what I did to make him nervous. I mean, we’re in a lot of classes together. We’re both pilots.”  Shiro looked very serious. “Do you think he’s just really into flying, and since I’m the best pilot--”

“Except when you lose.”

“Overall. Maybe he’s feeling self-conscious? Oh man, what can I do to help him chill out?”

Matt turned around with a flat expression. “He’s not upset about you being a pilot.”

“I mean, not upset. Maybe he’s just gotten nervous.”

“Oh, the kid’s nervous, all right.”

“Right. So he’s nervous, and I wondered if you had an idea of how to chill him out.  He’s obviously got talent, but every time he thinks I’ll show him up, I guess, he makes a hash out of it.”  Shiro nodded, pleased that he’d figured out exactly how to describe the problem.

Matt stared at Shiro for a long time.  “You really think that this Keith kid drops things and crashes because he’s afraid of your prowess as a pilot?” His expression he kept carefully flat.

Shiro blinked, confusion blooming over his face.

Matt pushed one of his large equipment bags into Shiro’s chest. “Why don’t you see if he behaves like this in another context. One that has nothing to do with flying. Like… oh, I don’t know, going to the showers tomorrow afternoon?”

Shiro readjusted the bag in his arms. Or tried to. “You’re--whuu!” He caught it and rebalanced again. “You’re mental.”

“Thank you, Shiro.” Matt smiled and easily slung his other bag over his shoulder.

“No, that’s not--”  _ Slip, wriggle, grab. _ “--Not what I meant. Like crazy.”

Matt couldn’t completely hide his snerk, so turned to head back to the main barracks. Sometimes Shiro was priceless. This Keith kid was the opposite of subtle, from the sounds of it.

Bit there were other ships to inspect, and that was all that was said between the two friends. Little did Matt Holt know how just such an opportunity might present itself.

*   *   *

“Why are the barracks showers out of order?” Lance crossed his arms in frustration. He had waited ages for a turn. Earlier, they’d been too crowded. And now, a haphazardly placed sign proclaimed:

SHOWERS OFF LIMITS TO STUDENTS

REPAIRS UNDERWAY

“Oh, that! Yeah, I heard all about that.” Hunk popped another Salt Space Snack into his mouth and munched.

Lance looked over his shoulder at Hunk. “Okay.”

Hunk munched thoughtfully, then noticed the continued stare. “What?”

“You going to give me information or am I going to have to tell them your rations should be a 500 calorie diet?

Hunk was aghast at such a cruel, treacherous ploy. “Geez, Lance, I just assumed you already knew.”

“That’s why I  _ asked _ , you gaseous anomaly!”

Hunk licked his fingers and glared. “Look, I don’t mind telling you. No need to get so… so mean.”  He crumpled his Salt Space Snack bag and tossed it into the recycling bin. “Okay, so as I heard it, it went like this:”

*   *   *

So first it started as a senior class prank. Like, someone stole three bags of engineer’s tools.

((“What kind of tools?”))

You know, like, big ones. For the big hover jets. I think it’s because the cargo pilots didn’t want to do a big practical test. So they stole the hexacode wrench set and the Hertz array defibrillator, at least. Oh, and the Big Calibrator.

((Lance let out a low whistle.))

Anyway, that made Iverson real mad. Not like six extra rotations on weekend mad. Like…  _ mad _ . So all of the upper class in pilot squad had to sandblast all of the transport vehicles prior to the repaint job. You know, how the logo’s been changed recently? So all the upper class pilots had to sandblast all the trucks, and then do a few primer coats. It was grueling work, and then  _ everyone _ had to shower. But there’s obviously not enough showers for an entire class to go at once, you know, here at the barracks entrance. And no one was allowed to walk all over Garrison while being that dirty. So there was a really long line, right?

Anyway, they decided to go by rank, which means that the top pilots got to first. But there was this one pilot who just wouldn’t get out of the shower, for whatever reason. So one of the GAs, you know, Shiro? Okay, yeah, so Shiro went in to get him, make him give up his spot.

After that, everything went crazy. So this pilot has a freak out, and somehow he and Shiro demolish most of the shower set up. I hear it started with someone slipping, and just escalated like whoa….

*   *   *

Keith just let the hot water beat his chest. The Garrison water pressure was nothing to sneeze at. It had been a rough day. Some asshole had wasted a whole day a training with that little prank, and Keith hadn’t spent a second in air because of it. If he ever found out the person who actually stole the kit…

...He’d thank them forever.

Because Shiro had headed the orders for the scrubbing, blasting, and painting of the cargo transport vehicles. Shiro had been right there, sweating and working, hauling and hefting along with the students who were being punished. He’d… Shiro had taken off his shirt.

Shiro had been under the hot sun.

Without a shirt.

Sweat on his back, on his brow.

Smiling and happy to help.

Kind and authoritative….

Shit.

Keith turned so that the water would hit him a little harder.

After several minutes, and a regaining of his composure, he sighed. Keith knew that he couldn’t stay in here forever. He might as well get it over with. He squirted shampoo into his hand and roughly started foaming it into his hair. He closed his eyes and tried to simply let the heat of the day’s eye candy fade into fuzzy, dim lust.

“Hey, Cadet!” DON-DON came a beating on the stall wall. “You can’t take all day in there.”

What? Keith turned, eyes still closed to keep the shampoo out of his eyes. That voice. Oh god, no, that was definitely Shiro. He needed to not be seen, half-hard and already on his shit-list.  He scrubbed hard and fast to try to get clean, when Shiro pulled the curtain aside and said, in a warning tone, “Cade- Keith?”

The switch to such a warm tone was shocking enough that Keith whirled on the ball of his foot. “Ow ow ow!” he said as the shampoo stung his eyes. He slipped.

Everything moved very fast. But this is how it went.

First, Keith’s heel slipped in the suds of the shampoo he had been rinsing. Because some part of him wanted to pretend it was modest, his other leg curled around the other, in a delicate ballet-esque pose.

Then, because Keith felt the imminent fall, he reached for the first thing he could grab to stabilize. It would have been the wall, but the shower curtain had been pushed open. Therefore, what he grabbed was only the thin, semi-transparent shower curtain.

“Keith!” said Shiro helpfully.

“Shiro!” answered Keith. Shampoo got in his mouth and he coughed. It was just enough to give him the forward momentum necessary to be the worst possible slip. He catapulted forward into Shiro’s chest. It should have been enough to stop the horror that was to follow.

Except that Keith never let go of the shower curtain.

And this particular shower was in the worst repair.

Half of the curtain ripped, but the sixteenth stress point finally tugged down the bar that held the curtain. Through the principles of physics, it spun back at high force. The shower curtain twisted around Keith’s body, spinning him with his own inertia. Shiro, at whose reflexes were nothing to sneeze, managed to reach out to catch the spiraling cadet. He did not, however, anticipate the next result of poor-shower-design-meets-teenage-awkward.

For the shower curtain rod end, at its velocity, was exactly enough force to dislodge the shower head from the wall, and at such an angle that the piping was verily  _ ripped _ from the wall. In a cascade of plastic and plaster, the geyser of boiling water shot into the air, slammed into the ceiling, and sent tiles in a rocket-like bombing cascade. The primary pipe from the shower head arched downward, propelled by the phenomenal water pressure. Truly, Galaxy Garrison should be proud of its plumbing engineering, if not its structural facilities. This feat of physics, this pell-mell pipe, jerked forward, down, and then up again and plowed, hard, into the backside of one Keith Kogane, the number one pilot in the upper class.

Keith gave a silent scream, fell hard into Shiro’s waiting arms.

It was at this point that the great geyser tapped even the Garrison’s water heating capabilities, and all showers immediately ran ice cold. While neighbors had begun noticing the events (the nearest having been pelted with ceiling tile milliseconds before), it was at this moment that every last upper class pilot whom had actually made it to the showers,  _ screamed _ bloody murder. Because every last one had been chilled by the icy hand of Nohautwadder, a local deity.

Keith looked up into the stunned eyes of Takashi Shirogane, legendary pilot and the dominant feature in Keith’s fantasies. Keith was acutely aware of the plaster dust, ceiling tiles, water, and shampoo that decorated his entire, naked body. Only Shiro’s uniform and a transparent shower curtain divided them. Keith was in pain. In addition to the aches in his muscles from the hellish day of sandblasting, he now was covered in tiny tile cuts, large bruises, and a half-dozen indecencies. Shampoo still stung his eyes and lungs.

Shiro was holding him. Tenderly. Oh god.

Grabbing his shower curtain and a half-size towel, and notably abandoning his uniform in the locker, Keith (to use colloquial parlance)  _ booked it outta there _ .

*   *   *

Matt leaned against the fresh-painted cargo van and drank deeply of his juicebox. “Ah…”

Shiro stayed silent, sipping his beverage.

Matt shuffled along the length of the vehicle, and leaned shoulder-to-shoulder to his friend.

Shiro grit his teeth, knowing it was coming.

Matt grinned, ear to ear.

Shiro waited patiently, not about to give his friend an  _ inch _ .

“Told.”

Sip.

“You.”

Sip.

“ _ So _ .”

Shiro blushed. Keith had been really… really….

“I told you so.”

Shiro sighed, trying to banish the mental image of Keith, wet and nude, with wide, sweet, lavender eyes, from his memory. Giving Matt a light beating seemed like the perfect methodology.

It didn’t work, but he still enjoyed it.

 

END

 

POST-SCRIPT

 

Matt opened his cabinet.  “Oh, man!  So  _ that’s _ where to tools went. I can’t believe I tucked them in here. I guess someone was looking for these all day yesterday.”

 

POST-POST-SCRIPT

 

Lance tilted his head, a frown blooming over his features.  “They went by rank? I bet it was Keith. Had to be Keith. That guy is  _ always _ making it about him!”

 


End file.
